ap cashed up and eyeing more wa acreage

African Petroleum just raised $250mil, without offering any discount to their current SP. The placement was oversubscribed too.. I'd say they're pretty serious about "becoming West Africa?s largest independent oil and gas exploration and development company."

Since October last year AP were on track to run out of cash pretty much straight after drilling the 2 Liberian wells. This placement will give them current cash on hand of $385mil. After accounting for all announced expenditure over the next 12 months or so, AP should have about $188mil spare, plenty to join us.

From this announcement:
"The Company intends to use the funds raised from the Placement:
(a) to drill up to 4 additional wells;
(b) to acquire further acreage in offshore West Africa;
(c) to undertake additional 3D seismic, initially focusing on Block SL-03 offshore Sierra Leone; and
(d) for additional working capital."


Good to note their previous placement in June last year did not mention acquiring further acreage of WA. I like to think the list is in order of magnitude/ priority but could be slightly random.

Anyway I'm betting there's a pretty good chance they will join us. After all, there's the shared structure saddling their Gambian license, they're acquiring acreage all around us, they are specifically interested in cretaceous submarine fans offshore Senegal and for whatever reason they threw our blocks into their presentation late last year. Also, there's been a fair amount of attention paid to AP and Gambia in the past few FAR presentations.

In my opinion AP's priority has been organising this placement before closing any deal on Senegal (hypothetically speaking) as there's no way they would go and make a deal "subject to capital raising".. more a thing only a minow would do (like we did). Could also be to do with the decree and/ or more importantly waiting to see if Ophir exercises their option and becomes operator.

Would be nice to see ME negotiate a piece of Gambia if AP does indeed join the party. Anyway, I think it's certainly safe to say the odds of farming out with AP have increased since yesterday.